TALIBAN HAVE COME HOME TO ROOST !

One was not surprised to read Carlotta Gall & David Rohde article circulated by NYT NEWS SERVICE telling us that ISI - Inter-Services Intelligence - of Pakistan has lost control over al-Qaida and Taliban fighting forces. They are reportedly turning their guns towards Pakistan now and some senior military officers of Pakistan are quoted that quite a number of Pak officials had also joined al-Qaida and Taliban and they were dismissed.
As the ISI had doctrined them with hard-lined Islamist beliefs, it was a struggle for the agency to put a stop to the ideology spreading. Many agency officials who trained the militants developed a kinship with them to the detriment of ISI and they were expelled.
What is a Qaida ? It is a book containing alphabets. And what does Taliban mean ? It means students. Talib-e-Ilam means one who desires knowledg - or a student. But, of course, now we know of only a twisted version of these noble words.
After 9/11, one heard Gen Pervez Musharraf on Pak TV that childred from poor families were taken away from their poor parents and trained as militants. "This should stop," he said. We all heard it all over the world, but nobody gave it a second thought that why the good General had permitted this practise in the first placce.
India, of course, during the cold war, was treated as a big bully out to trouble good boy Pakistan (butter would not melt in his mouth) and seldom, if ever, any attention was paid to what it said - or what it wanted to say.
Only after President Bush's visit to India, and his commitment to let India have nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes, was Pakistan told bluntly by the President that Pakistan had a very bad record of honouring international commitments. This when the General asked for a parity between India and Pakistan.
Another shock for Gen Musharraf was his "ally" China's refusal to support him on nuclear fuel issue. China had learnt that Pakistan was inciting its Muslim population to revolt.
Whatever the historical blunders, or our failure to read the writings on the wall, the fact remains that there is an al-Qaida and the Taliban, whosoever created or nursed the two, and they are an imminent danger to the whole world, not only to Pakistan.

o0o